11232313.1Kids. Sarah Silverman was on the Tonight Show, so I stuck around after Jay's monologue to see her. I really wanted to learn if she's ever "normal," you know? She isn't. Sarah told a joke about being trapped briefly in an elevator and having to do a doodie in the corner. That made me think of my neighbors, he is 82 and she is 80, who would likely also be watching Jay before turning in. They would definitely not have thought the joke funny, but on the other hand one of them might have turned to the other to observe that Sarah is enthusiastically for Obama too, along with Sandra Bernhard. Just a little cognitive dissonance for me, that's all.
And then there was this, sorry ..
What you want to do is head out east on 659th Avenue, past the sugar beet processing plant, then watch for The Boulevard. That's the entrance to our subdivision. What's the name of the boulevard? The. Oh, okay. Come down a few blocks until you get to Cholera, turn right there and we're the fifth house on the right. Number 67106. What's your house look like? Exactly like every other house in this subdivision. Are all the streets out here named after horrible diseases? I don't think so. We have friends over a few blocks on Backstab Avenue. If you go down our street a ways, it turns unto Trashtruck Trail. No other diseases I can think of off hand. Does that one lead up to the dump? No.
No reason at all for writing it except that the exchange popped into my head while I was washing dishes.
Another for the unusual names department, consider Wang Mang Mang, reporter for CCTV. Reminds me of a excellent insult I heard in high school, by one Vernon Gravert as a matter of fact, which is too filthy to type into the blog, of course, though it involves Walla Walla, Washington if you've heard it. I mention Vernon because I was the only person in the entire school who could get away from calling him that instead of his nickname without getting smashed to a bleeding pulp, and to this day neither of us can remember why that was. Also because I thought he should be recognized on the Internet for his brilliant use of language during those years instead of being on a list of USDA-approved AMS representatives/graders working at various slaughter lamb plants who are authorized to certify slaughter lamb carcasses for criteria according to subparagraph 31 B which is what he is doing now. Hey Vern! (In case he ever looks himself up.)
There was a special candlelight memorial vigil for the teenager shot dead in the street in a really lousy neighborhood last night. They mentioned that right after the report on the teenager shot dead in the street in a really lousy neighborhood tonight. The special candlelight memorial vigil for tonight's murder hasn't been scheduled yet, but balloons and heartfelts are welcomed at the street site. Candles are not recommended due to the rain. Rick Macherat
11232312.1Another fish story. I was sailing along in the paper, so much on schedule this week that I was actually reading today's edition. Crime, crime, scandal, more crime, trials, more crime then, whoa, salmon!. "Don't read it. It will only make you crazy." Yeah, yeah ... the little voice keeps saying that and it never happens. It always happens.
Okay, so what now? I'll tell you: they're going to tear down another dam, the Gold Ray Dam on the Rogue River in Oregon in order to replace it with some world-class kayaking rapids and remove the last remaining barrier to the salmon returning to the Cascades from the sea.
See, a lot of people don't realize that the salmon have been waiting out there at sea all these years, in this case since 1904, for the dams to come down so they can resume their runs. As for the kayakers, well, they've been waiting for what seems like forever to a self-absorbed accessorized-up adventurer yuppie puke. What was that dam for anyway? Electricity. And what are they going to do for electricity now? Oh, just build another coal-fired generation plant. There's lots of coal in the northwest, just lying around actually. (Black sooty burning coal pollution doesn't affect salmon since they're underwater.)
And once the salmon return at last to the Upper Rogue River which they've remembered so fondly ever since they left in 1904, they will spawn and die. Assuming they get past the bears (protected,) sea lions (protected,) cute seals (protected,) Orca whales (protected) and Native Americans (protected,) that is.Rick Macherat RMacherat
11232311.1My acting career cut short. Brother comes up to the kitchen and out of the blue recites the line that I supposedly had in a school play in 1957.
Brother: We've got some mighty nice ten-cent stamps. Me: Huh? Brother: That was your line in the play. Me: What play? Brother: "Almost an Angel" Me: I don't remember that. When was it? Brother: 1957. Me: And what did I say again? Brother: That was your line. You said, We've got some mighty nice cen-tent tamps. Me: So, you're saying that I had one line in a school play 51 years ago and I muffed it? Brother: Yes. Me: Who was there? Brother: All of us. The whole family. Me: Wonderful. Thanks for telling me.
Sometimes it can be a little unsettling living with a person who remembers EVERYTHING. Everything that ever happened. If he doesn't remember, he just makes stuff up. Who would ever know?Rick Macherat
11232310.1Looking for that sure thing. It doesn't have to be an 87% return per year, insured by an agency of the federal government, blah, blah. I was just looking for something reasonable, and this squib attracted my interest. One of our more affluent local communities discovered that it had a park and is proposing a local bond issue to renovate it. How about 5.13% for 20 years? Tax free municipal, my favorite. The article went on to point out that the bond issue would cost the owner of an average $1 million home approximately $117 per year. Now, this community has a history of approving their bond issues, but I balked. (1) Would they approve and continue to pay for a park none of them had ever been to and only one in three thousand had ever heard of? I mean, when you have a million dollar home and presumably beautiful grounds and a couple of Mexican groundskeepers, do you go to the park? I wouldn't know. (2) What kind of financial situation will those $1 million home owners be in after 20 more years? Their property taxes already have to be in the five figures and should go to six by then. (3) If Orange County can go broke ...
This entry is so far off my usual. I have no idea where it's going.
This particular community, incidentally an island, an island with its own express lanes to the city from a landscaped lidded freeway across the tip so they have access but are not annoyed by it, has some pretty nice homes. Doctors live there. The high school is about at the level of your typical small college.
Like I said, I don't know. I'll be fairly insane for the next week or so, given Halloween and The Election. I wonder, afterwards, will we return to normal life? Will there be news again? Will we hear anything about that island that vanished during the volanic eruption, obliterating everything? What island, what eruption? See?
No, answering my own question. There will be the recriminations, the new cabinet, speculation about our direction, reaction from abroad (yaaaaaay!) and moving vans, lots and lots of moving vans. Eight years is a long time, even in Third Millennium years.Rick Macherat
11232309.1Birmingham, bottom, Biden, burglars. Perhaps not in that order, depends on the memory which as you know has proven unreliable at times. Birmingham International Airport in the UK has presented its annual report. In it, they included a photograph
which I believe was intended to illustrate the effectiveness of their ongoing security program in its relentless fight against terrorism. Probably not to highlight the travel accessories of modern British ladies.
There was something about Joe Biden but dang if I can remember what it was.
Sometimes when a television commercial truly, truly drives you mad, you just have to type about it. Mine is the Brinks Home Security System. Young woman, home alone, and suddenly an evil-looking man bursts through her door, intent upon ... what? One can only imagine the horrific crime he has planned. But wait, an alarm goes off, and a calm person who is sitting at a computer monitor, perhaps many time zones away, all headphoned and keyboarded up, receives the signal and leaps into action, calling our victim on the telephone. She has the presence of mind to interrupt her "running for you life" mode and revert to "somebody get the phone" mode and presumably explain to the nice man what has happened and to thank him for his distant reassurance. And for calling the police. Of course, in our story neither of them, nor the perp for that matter, is aware that the police fairly much ignore home security alarm calls. Unless it is to write someone a ticket for having more than one of them in their lifetime. My, this does drive you mad. Did something happen? No, I don't have a home security system. My neighbor does though.
Where is the bottom? This market is insane, some say. Some get so agitated about it, and everything else in the news for that matter, that they have begun to talk faster and faster and faster, almost to the point of unintelligibility. Some would be Anderson Cooper, the hopefully soon-to-be shirtless someday dreamboat and global news anchor, owner of this quote [from CBS News;]
Cooper says Vanderbilt was not like anyone else's mom. "She would show up at, like, report day at my school where...parents have to go in and get the report card, in sort of like a beaver skin purple Zandra Rhodes coat. And I'd be like 'Mom, you know, can't you just like wear tweed or something? Just like, tone it down?' And now I'm very happy and proud that she doesn't, and she's completely unique."
which impressed me for if nothing else the precocious fashion sense of a young schoolboy. So, Anderson is wondering aloud and repeatedly and faster and faster one evening, "Where is the bottom?" and the television screen seems full of faces from all over in various windows and in one of them is Richard Quest with all those teeth, and Richard just so seems to wanting to shriek, "Right here, honey, right here!" but Anderson seems not to notice. Yeah right. My own theory is that Andy is talking faster and faster not because he's on anything but because he realizes down deep that this thing is so going to blow up one day, don't know exactly how, but is it ever and he'd better get in all he has to say while there's still airtime. Like, my theory anyway.
Oh yes, the Biden thing. Does Senator Biden even have a wife? Kids? Do they purchase clothing, belong to any gun clubs? Perhaps someone will ask. Eventually. You know, my hoping that Sen. Obama wins is only the first half, that being the fact that this country will be a totally unlivable steaming gruel of mass chagrin, despair and whine if He he doesn't. The other half is that Vice President Joseph Biden will supply ENDLESS material for all of us. Bank on it.Rick Macherat posted by Rick at 9:46 PM
11232308.1Modern Times. I thought of my grandmother and her times this morning while reading the paper. She wouldn't know what to make of a lot of it, though I'm sure she would have taken it in stride. The politics would have no doubt been a little unsettling. Grandmother was pretty much a Democrat for Life - Franklin D. Roosevelt, you know. I guess one has nearly to starve to appreciate that sort of thing. We haven't, not even close. It wasn't politics today, though; it was this that caught my attention in the paper:
Yes, that would have been a problem. She probably would have said, "Land sakes!" or something like that, not "WTF!?" like a modern grandmother.
Would my grandmother be voting for that cullud man? I believe she would. Oh, lots of people might believe their grandmother would have been an Obama supporter, but I'm quite sure about mine. She wouldn't put up signs or anything like that, but she would definitely assert herself with a few words and a laser glare. No one would fuss with her. They'd probably sneak back that night and burn down her house, but they wouldn't fuss with her. Rick Macherat
11232307.1A nasty controversy. Several professors at Washington State University are annoyed at having being tagged as "plastic bag radicals" and are speaking out. In particular, Wilmott Gibbons, Professor of Agronomy, took out an ad in the local paper to express his support of plastic and remarked, Frequently, I'll even ask for a few extra, and the folks at the IGA have always accommodated me. I think it's important to set the record straight on these things.
What is so often obscured in these discussions is the great science being done to combat the ravages of an excessive human presence on this planet. For example, in Elmo, Indiana, a home scientist named Ray Rangle has perfected a method of rehydrocarbonifying plastic bags. For about a year now, Mr. Rangle has been stuffing ordinary grocery bags into the gas tank of his tractor and getting about 8 miles to the gallon off them. Why do these things go unreported? Some conspiracy maybe? I would NOT be surprised.
In a related musing, a stealth move by Bill Gates, and any news regarding a new business being started by Gates which only fires up about 1,130 hits on Google would definitely be called stealthy Maybe you just mixpelled it. The new venture is called bgC3 LLC, and you would think legions of the fiscally concupiscent, having missed out on becoming millionaires the last time, would be all over this one. Sadly, as Bill [probably] put it, BTDT. [Deleting usual whiny line about the MSFT I sold in 1986.]Rick Macherat
11232306.1Whoa mite. There is a feature in our Sunday supplement about how businesses are adapting to the needs of Generation Y or whatever this one is called. It seems they are indeed very needy, and in order to keep them happy and keep them at all employers have had to redefine everything from top to bottom. Reading it was enough to make anyone a bit older puke, I kid you not. It wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that the entire piece centered around our largest and most prominent HOSPITAL. Yikes. It was scary to read about just how much hand-holding is involved here - not the patients, the professional staff including doctors and ICU nurses.
Just wait until the recession gets fully blown. Most of these people have never worked through one, or rather scratched and fought to keep working through one. Yes, I know .. what about the dot-com bust? As Crocodile Dundee might say, "Recession? You call that a recession mite? This is a recession." Oh, it is so coming, and for people like me it is a dream come true. For a few quarters, service will improve dramatically, from the "Service" department at the auto dealership to snippy waitresses everywhere. Even the blood pressure and flu shot clinic will have time for you now.
When times are good and money is fast, it's "Get outta the way grandpa," because us grubby old feeble pensioners can't possibly bring along enough money to keep up. But soon it will be "May I get that for you sir?" That's because despite times getting real lean, we just plug along still making the same as before. Recession, what recession? Hope you get work soon, sonny, and be sure and keep that W-4 current, y'hear? Hank-u, hank-uvurmuch. heh-heh.Rick Macherat
11232305.1Missing: One Provost. This was a strange case. The Provost at Washington State University, Steven Hoch, got into an altercation with a faculty member after a particularly stormy meeting, someone got shoved and the Provost vanished. Sent an email out to a few key people and went back to Kentucky. Some said the endless loess and wheat fields drove him out of his mind,
but I doubt that. Skipping to the end of the story, he went back to WSU, but as a Professor of History instead of Provost. The Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine will take on the additional position. (Note from an alum: it shouldn't keep him away from his critters all that much.) Still, some questions were left out there:
Why does Washington State University have a Provost? Doesn't that job have something to do with academics?
It has everything to do with academics. That's what a Provost does.
So why does WSU need one?
It's all part of the World Class thing .. oh never mind.
And what's the deal with the salary?
Professor Hoch received an annual stipend of $300,000 as Provost. By the faculty formula rule and having been awarded tenure as a condition of his employment agreement, he will continue as a Professor of History at $245,000 per year, or nine elevenths (9/11) of the administrative pay.
Nine elevenths. Any sensible reason for that figure?
Not really. Just call it part of the unfathomability of state government and administration.
Yikes! That's some piece of History for WSU don't you know.
Indeed. All part of World Class.
Seriously folks, the World Class advertising campaign is far more embarrassing even than having an Academic Administrator get into a brawl, leave town in a snit, then come back and take up a cushy job paying more than what the Governor makes. Rick Macherat
11232304.1Terry cloth mother. The Internet is a wonderful potion for the onset of senility. I don't know about later on - will I still remember there is an Internet? I was musing tonight and somehow traveled from Brutish Architecture, Albert Speer, the new Seattle Library and a brilliant critique thereof by Keith Pleas and finally to the terry cloth mothers used by ... in his groundbreaking experiment on nurturing and his construction of the science of love. So, who was it? Dang. It's been 43 years since I took Psych 416, so failing to remember is probably not true senility, but it seems so to me because it feels just like all the other things I can't remember. Like what happened today for instance. Quick to the Internet and a well-formed search query, and PRESTO: Harry F. Harlow, pictures and about 500 words. Caducity temporarily overcome. Cauducity is a better word anyway since almost no one knows it.
I probably click on Google a minimum of 25 dimes a day, kind of the price you pay for talking to yourself a lot. I talk with Brother a great deal too, but that's a whole nother thing entirely. None of this likely would have transpired this evening, at least not with as much vigor, had it not been Presidential Debate Reality Show in America III night. Is it just me? Yes, you're the only one. Everyone else is watching. CNN is already re-running it, and they will do so again and again over the weekend and so will everyone else just in case someone managed to miss it, say some rescued-just-in-time spelunkers. The worst part about it is that the whole monstrous phenomenon appeals tremendously to young people, and once they find out that it doesn't cost 50 cents to vote, they will do so in vast unprecedented numbers. And Lord only knows what the result of that will be since we've been used to our grandparents determining the outcome of elections for so long.
The other thing we seem to have made into a toy is the economy. Down 733 today. Does that make any sense at all? Someone said it had to do with a report of decreased something or another. Oh, well that clears it up. We'll be up tomorrow. Ford is $2. Royal Bank of Scotland is $1. Did you ever imagine that such things could be possible? You can buy a couple of thousand shares of either of those and make a nice little profit over the course of a morning. And a lot of people are doing just that.
That only leaves religion. Thank goodness it is still intact and going strong, right? Rick Macherat
11232303.1President Bush's popularity declines. You already know my theory on this Presidency: when Karen Hughes left, George Bush lost his rudder. It's too bad he could never speak properly. This has allowed even the most ignorant people to believe they are smarter than he is.
One person who isn't ignorant but is less intelligent that he believes is Matt Damon, American actor and philanthropist (not kidding) and poster boy for edacious ambition. He has gone from creating and playing brilliant underachievers to becoming one in the popular culture. It's all Cliff Notes, but who cares anymore? I mention Matt because he doesn't think President is smart at all. Sarah Palin either, especially Sarah Palin. I don't know about either of them myself, but I don't want people in the White House who are too smart. See: President Bill Clinton, 1993-2001; Karl Rove: 2001-2007; Matt Damon: in his dreams of saving the world while not really trying.
The Not Bush Prize in Economics (also known as the Nobel) was awarded to Paul Krugman, "one of the great popularisers of economic ideas and a trenchant critic of the Bush administration. However, the prize was awarded for work done almost three decades ago in developing what is known as “new trade theory” and “new economic geography”. Not really. It was awarded for the first thing. The Peace Prize was given out last week - former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari. Observers were puzzled because Mr. Ahtisaari has an exceptional lifetime record of actually promoting peace and reconciliation around the world without being on Larry King Live all that much if at all. Furthermore, he has no opinion of Bush one way or the other. I think he deserves it, don't you?
If for no other reason than having to put up with stuff like this over all those years.
Incidentally, Paul Krugman got into economics in the first place after reading and being enthralled with The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. So, maybe I shouldn't be so snarky about him after all.Rick Macherat
11232302.1Economic thing, III. I was teaching Brother about banking today. Funny when you go back to the very basics and think about how things (are supposed to) work, you can experience some real clarity. For instance .. you'll remember that buried in the middle of the current economic mess is a lot of noise about extremely complicated financial instruments that are so brilliant that they were designed and understood by mathematicians and physicists. That should have been a clue. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, but if you throw enough science at some shiny parts you can make a case that you've got one, and there it is right now, running away magnificently as it will for all eternity. Invest on the dotted line please. People get swept up and buy in. Guaranteed, works every time. Trouble is, it's all hooey. All those mathematicians and physicists are just taking plain old money and making it look like magic. IT'S STILL JUST MONEY. NOT MAGIC. The only difference between this and every other scam throughout history is that these days it takes more and more brainpower to fool all the people some of the time.
So be warned. It could happen again, and again. It will happen again and again. All you have to remember is there is no such thing as magic and you'll be okay. You know how most people hate to say I told you so? Not me - I love to say I told you so.Rick Macherat posted by Rick at 10:26 AM
Saturday, October 11, 2008
11232301.1BDA. That's what they called it during the First Gulf War: Bomb Damage Assessment. Actually, they had been calling the mayhem of an aerial assault by that acronym for some time, but by 1990 the rest of us were into it. Yeah, I caught the BDA on the CNN brief this morning. Looks like we hit the Republican Guard real good overnight. Incidentally, that was back when we kicked butt in our wars. I'm not real sure what's going on in this one. It would probably help if we were bombing more stuff.
Tragically, the expression seems to have a bit more meaning when applied to the present State of the Economy. I've noticed that nearly all of those in the know are seriously playing down what is going to happen, perhaps not wanting to be the one blamed for setting it off. I'm not worried about that; no one reads this blog. (Sorry Robbie, almost no one.) The sister-in-law is on (another) cruise. She emails me that the rich people are all talking about it. There's the first bomb: the rich are going to be the first to get hit. Many already know it, others won't until they open their October statements. The reaction will be very shrill, but painless. Some maids and lawn men will be let go. The SO of sister-in-law gets a magnificent State Pension. He believes it is Safe and Eternal like the pensions in, say, the state of Illinois. Isn't Illinois one of the states that can't pay its bills at the moment? Yes, sadly, but I'm sure everything will be all right. After all, pension funds are invested in the safest instruments, A or higher. I'll let you imagine the rest of this scenario. The funds will be getting their reports at the end of October too. Sorry.
I mentioned Illinois because it figured in a side story I saw today. A huge contracting company went out of business there this week, let all of its staff go and was auctioning off the equipment. There wasn't anything wrong with the business; the State of Illinois simply hadn't paid its bills, and the company went to their bank for an ordinary bridge loan in order to cover its own bills and payroll. You guessed it, the bank turned down the very routine and previously safe loan. Now, multiply this sort of thing about eight million times and you get an ugly picture of just where we are headed. You've seen those exhibitions of falling dominoes? People you count on every day to be at work, doing whatever they do for you, won't be there. Phones will go to voice mail for everyone just as they do now, only no one will call back. The Safeway will get real ugly real quick as will every other business for as long as it's open. Hang on, and learn how to pluck a chicken. For that matter, you had better learn how to choke/pluck/trim/dress/cook, whatever, (like I would know) just about anything that walks around and bleats, honks or barks!Rick Macherat
11232300.1This economic thing, II. The average SOB doesn't understand, or care, what is all about with TARP, AIG, HOLC or RTC. We care about our 401k, our SEP - I think that's the same thing don't mess with me while I'm thinking bizness - our IRA, things that we get in the mail which have dollars in them, dollars which (used to) belong to us. We've lost trillions in a few short weeks. Some people are upset.
Somehow I have a problem with Anderson Cooper of all people leading the Second Storming of the Bastille that CNN Nightshrill is trying to stir up. All three cable news channels have abandoned all pretense of impartiality, but CNN is the most disappointing because they take themselves so seriously. I guess we're to believe that Mme Vanderbilt is home making banners and torches for les enfants de la patrie.
How could this happen, and how did it happen to coincide with the critical weeks before a U.S. election? Have you thought about that?
The ultra-sophisticated financial instruments you keep hearing about and which no one except the geeks and computers who created them understands were designed so they can not fail within statistically imaginable economic circumstances. In other words, the housing crisis, bank failures, confidence meltdowns - things like that are figured in; there are mechanisms to accommodate them when they get out of synch. Not even deliberate nastiness by the likes of el Hugo, Ahmanutjob or Yobo-boy could accomplish this much damage. No, it could only be done by someone with multiple billions of dollars in free assets, the pure intention of bringing the system down by making completely counterintuitive money-losing moves, the ability to move with stealth across many borders, and a total disregard for all personal cost and risk downside against an unfathomable upside. Now, who might that be?Rick Macherat
11232299.1They care. They really care! CNN has gone global, coming up on 1:00 AM Pacific time. The rest of you are probably asleep .. or at least partying. Certainly not watching business news, I hope anyway. CNN only does that and puts on real news, with anchors in London and their gawdawful Channel4speak, when something big is happening, like a tsunami. They're all worried to death: Dubai, Japan, Indonesia, worried that we might go poor and stop buying their shit. Awww.
Oh hold on, they've gone to Richard Quest ... hard to listen to Richard without wondering just a bit, you know, if he's wearing anything uhhh special. Anyway, Richard explained, in about 525 words more than necessary that where the U.S. government is buying debt, the British government is buying the BANKS. Blimy!
Stay tuned. It's going to get much uglier.Rick Macherat
11232298.1Alt. When I was in my mid- and late twenties, I knew just about everything OR at least everything except the things I would never know, but at least I knew what they were. Celestial Mechanics for instance, Sanskrit, jazz. No more. Take mass education, mass communications, mass media and freedom, give all that to nearly seven billion people and you get what we've got: cluelessness. Furthermore, we don't even realize how clueless we really are, young people especially. They think the way I did at that age. You remember my example of a chicken in a future apocalyptic starving Seattle - a Seattleite would still want to adopt it. Few would have any idea how to kill, cook and eat it. At the other end of inanity, a $200,000,000 executive signs on to a Plan he can't possibly comprehend and the only thing he knows is that it won't work but the shit will hit the fan after he's gone and he believes he will get away with it only he won't. We're going to make sure of that.
Now there's alt. What? Alt. It used to be, well, this:
stupid conformist kid 1: hey your wearing lacoste! your such a chav!
alternative kid: im wearing a lacoste shirt because i like the shirt, not the lable.
stupid conformist kid 2: ewwww your listening to nirvana! your such a mosher!
alternative kid: im listening to nirvana because i like this song, not because i want to fit in with your stupid groups.
the spelling and gram just making it more real, but now Alt has morphed. Think of it as anti-Alt. I came across it after a whole wave of page hits in response to the little "poem" by Prophet of 50 Cent, who is sadly now banned. Turns out I'm not the only one who thinks he's white, only I think he's ultra-white whereas the gang at the ARG-dot-com teen network only thinks he's like them actually - disaffected, typing away on their $$$ system late at night in totally tricked out rooms in their parents' magnificent multi-gabled cul-de-sac quad-garaged and fireplaced home. I believe Prophet is even whiter than that. He might even be old. Say it ain't so. Old as you even? No, not that old. Anyway, he gives it away via an inability to mixspell properly.
At the totally galactic opposite of the realm of unknown-to-me knowledge lies everything2-dot-com. What do they have? Everything. That is everything in the way of thinking, then typed out very intelligently. Kind of like an online Mensa Club but where they're so brilliant that they don't even bother to crow about it, which is unusual. I do wonder what happened to everythingone-dot-com. Maybe I could have kept up with that one at least.
The point of this is that I used to feel comfortable. Okay, I already know all of this, I'll eventually learn that over there, the rest is too hard and I'll never get it, but I know it's there. Now I'm just floundering, treading water and making little headway in a sea with no known dimensions. Occasionally, I'll climb up on a little island and quickly find I don't like it. So, we'll see.Rick Macherat TylerSmash Thor "Ace of Spades 117" grambobabambo Rekks Njord Revellion sleasterguy
11232297.1Local Government Run Amok, II. It's been said that Washington, especially Seattle, is about Process. We're proud of it and the fact that everyone is included, all points of view are welcomed, everyone has a seat at the table, everyone has an office in the Tower. What Tower? This one
Looks nice, doesn't it? That is sort of what we thought our new Seattle City Hall was going to be - soary, dramatic but classy, green of course etc., the architecturese alone on it was worth $1.8 million. Then it got built
and as any gardener could probably tell you, green gets brown sometimes. There were some unkind comments about an Airstream trailer in a rundown trailer park. That's okay, because the building only looks really shitty from the offices of the people who work in city government, here
Arghhh, Mein Guter Gott im Himmel! What is that building? How big is it? That's the Seattle Municipal Tower at 57 or 62 stories. It has the distinction of being the most grandiose such structure on the planet, especially for a city of barely 500,000 population. People work there
Arts Commission -- 40th floor Arts & Cultural Affairs -- 17th floor City Auditor -- 24th floor City Light -- 33rd floor Civil Service Commission -- 16th floor Economic Development -- 57th floor Ethics and Elections Commission -- 40th floor Executive Administration -- 43rd floor Firefighter's Pension Board -- 8th floor Fleets & Facilities Department -- 52nd floor Hearing Examiner -- 40th floor Housing, Office of -- 57th floor Human Services Department -- 58th floor Information Technology -- 27th floor Neighborhoods, Department of -- 17th floor Personnel Department -- 55th floor Planning and Development -- 20th floor Police Pension -- 18th floor Public & Community Safety Division -- 53rd floor Purchasing and Contracting Services -- 41st floor Retirement System -- 10th floor Revenue and Consumer Affairs -- 42nd floor Seattle Department of Transportation -- 39th floor Seattle Planning Commission -- 19th floor Seattle Public Utilities -- 49th floor Sustainability & Environment -- 27th floor
There are more. Many, many more. Soon, there will be a new County Building next door. Fifty stories. Counties are big, you know.
